Digital Storytelling

Joyfull Learning for Children in Kindergarten

Reza Nawafella Alya Parangu

Department of Library and Information Science, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia

Keywords: digital storytelling, education, kindergarten, learning methods.

Abstract: Telling and listening to stories is very beneficial for the mental and emotional intelligence of children.

Storying stretches the child's imagination, encouraging children to learn different ways of thinking. The

digital era is one of social and cultural phenomena and sometimes social and cultural practices have

changed in this era, including storytelling. This study aims to analyse the role of digital storytelling in

children's education in kindergarten. This study uses a qualitative approach, using the data obtained from

the interviews of children in kindergarten together with their parents after doing storytelling activities in

digital form. The data obtained are then reviewed and analysed with some related literature, so that to the

results can be interpreted. The results show that storytelling in digital form is very effective for children

who grow in the digital world today; with this method they are more enthusiastic about learning.

Storytelling in digital form makes it easy to remember the storyline that occurs and the effect is that what

they watch is applied to their daily lives.

1 INTRODUCTION

Reading a story to a child looks like a small activity

which if, we look deeper, turns out to be of great

benefit for the child. Activities relating to reading a

story from a book or just telling a story are fun for

children, and also provide other benefits for children

such as expanding the vocabulary of children,

developing and maintaining the skills of children

and helping the, to think creatively and broaden their

imaginations..

Not just in everyday life but also in other

contexts, reading a story or telling a story is a

learning method that have been applied in the world

of education, especially in the early childhood

education stage in kindergarten.

An education is intended to prepare students to

navigate the rapidly changing and complex world

which is interrelated in a landscape that is

increasingly digital and has resulted in mandatory

curricula, integrating global civic education and

digital technology in the classroom from

kindergarten to Grade 12 (Truong-White & Lorna,

2015). Digital storytelling integrated into the

educational curriculum,, increases the involvement

of kindergarten students in shaping and emerging

non-mainstream perspectives and self-reflection.

The digital era is one of social and cultural

phenomena; sometimes social and cultural practices

can change in this era, including storytelling. The

rapid development that occurs in technology causes

the activity of storytelling tha,t originally present in

oral form, is now increasingly becoming alive with a

touch of technology. The most popular media in the

digital stories are on video so the focus of this study

is digital storytelling in the form of video.

The purpose of this article is to analyse the role

of digital storytelling in children's education in

kindergarten, by highlighting what issues make

learning by using digital storytelling appealing to

children and how digital storytelling can play a role

in controlling child behaviour.

Previous research has been done by Yuksel-

Arslan, Yildirim & Ross Robin with an article

entitled A Phenomenological Study: Teachers'

Experiences of Using Digital Storytelling in Early

Childhood Education. This study investigates how

early childhood education (ECE) teachers

incorporated digital storytelling in their classrooms

and the challenges and successes that they faced in

the process. The study presented examples that

illustrated how ECE teachers had used digital

storytelling to enhance learning. The results show

that the emphasis on specifc points may assist

Parangu, R.

Digital Storytelling.

DOI: 10.5220/0008818801910194

In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Contemporary Social and Political Affairs (ICoCSPA 2018), pages 191-194

ISBN: 978-989-758-393-3

191

teachers, parents, educational researchers and

educational policy-makers in using technological

tools in young children's learning environments. In

this study, the method used is qualitative

phenomenology.

Then the difference between this research and

previous research lies in the purpose and method of

research. The purpose of this research is as

mentioned earlier that is, to analyse the role of

digital storytelling in childhood education in

kindergarten, by highlighting what issues make

learning by using digital storytelling appealing to

children and how digital storytelling can play a role

in controlling child behaviour. The method used in

this research is a qualitative approach, using data

obtained from interviews with children in

kindergarten together with their parents after doing

storytelling activities in digital form.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Digital Storytelling

Digital storytelling is an activity like telling a fairy

tale or telling a story traditionally but by using

different media; combining it with a touch of

technology makes the story seem more alive.

Another definition is that digital storytelling is a

short story-making process that allows students and

educators to improve their information-gathering

and problem-solving skills, and to facilitate the

ability to work in collaborative teams (Robin, 2008).

Digital storytelling is a form of video

communication that combines images and sounds

along with narration to discuss perspectives or

stories (Robin, 2008). Digital stories are different

from the usual videos; digital stories for children in

kindergartens are intentionally created to serve

educational purposes. They can be produced simply

and affordably by the instructor.

Digital storytelling is categorised into three types

(Robin, 2008): 1) a personal story about one's

experience, memory, or event; 2) an informative or

instructive story that teaches a particular subject to

the audience; and (3) stories that examine historical

events. Basically, there are two narrations in the

digital story, the open narration (the words in the

story) and the secret narrative felt by the viewers of

the image.

Digital storytelling video is used as the main

content for the online part of this study because of

the following practical advantages: (a) it can be

produced simply and affordably; (b) it exploits

unique sources of knowledge from contributing

researchers and educators; (c) it is available to

students with online access; (d) it can be archived

and used across semesters and available to students

in the future; (e) it ensures consistent content

presentation across instructors, and (f) resonates

with preservice teacher audiences, as digital

storytelling is a common educational tool (Shelton,

Warren, and Archambault, 2016).

2.2 Digital Storytelling in Education

Digital storytelling was first popularised in the

educational sphere of the 1990s, as accessibility to

audio and video capture devices and digital media

software expanded in those days (Lambert 2013).

Digital storytelling evolved as a potentially powerful

innovation to support the goals of global citizenship

education while meeting the demands of a digitally

immersed student population (Truong-White &

Lorna, 2015). As an educational tool, digital

storytelling has been used extensively throughout

the curricula of kindergartens.

In using digital stories as a source of learning, it

is important to note that educators need to be

equipped with dialogue skills around controversial

issues and understand dissent, so when students

express their own perspectives, educators can

respond, guide and direct them.

2.3 Kindergarten

Kindergarten, commonly referred to as preschool, is

a school intended children of a young age. From

Victoria's Department of Education and Training

article entitled ‘All about kindergarten’,

"Kindergarten is an important step for children and

is strongly recommended for all children. Research

shows that kindergartens improve the health and

well-being of children, helping them develop strong

social skills and encourage love of learning.

Children who enter into a kindergarten program are

more independent and hide-away and are more

likely to make a smooth transition to primary school

(Preparation)"

According to the Minister of Education and

Culture of the Republic of Indonesia Number 137 of

2014 on the National Standard of Early Childhood

Education, the age 4 to 6 is the ideal age for children

to enter kindergarten, because, at this age, many

children want to know, and have already developed

the mental readiness to study outdoors. children are

ready to adjust to the learning environment, both

physically and mentally. They are ready to be away

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from their parents, ready to meet new friends, ready

to follow instructions from educators, and ready to

do new things.

3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The method used in this study is qualitative, using

data collected and analysed through observation,

interview and literature review. Interviews were

conducted with children and their parents after a

storytelling activity in digital form. Students came

from kindergarten, from one class, which amounted

to 18 people. I took a sample of five boys and five

girls aged 5 years, along with their respective

companions (mother / caregiver) to be observed.

4 RESULT AND DISCUSSION

Reading a story or story telling is one of the

activities that children love. Through the story, the

development of children's intelligence and character

can form slowly, because childhood is a golden time

to instill a good personality in them (Sukirman,

2016). Listening to a story helps a child imagine

characters, places, plots and more, instead of seeing

them in the visual media. It also enhances creativity,

makes them more imaginative and open to ideas and

free thinking.

Storytelling also has a good impact for children

in sharpening their memory. Reading a storybook

can help improve a child's memory. When we finish

reading a story, we can ask him/her to repeat the

same story after a few days. Another alternative way

is for us to ask the child to develop the story further

with his/her own version. This is a fun way to

improve him/her memory and encourage

concentration.

Digital storytelling also offers several

advantages, including: 1) complex conservation

topics can be delivered more holistically through

video than with technical articles or textbooks; 2)

incorporating recordings from around the world is

important to convey the depth of the topic of a story

(the unique advantage of the video is the ability to

provide students with a representative experience

that exceeds the range of possible experiences in real

life); 3) telling stories in a digital form connects

emotionally with students. Informative films that

generate affective responses are also associated with

increased topic interest and narrative engagement

(LaMarre and Landreville, 2009). Digital stories

seek to promote learning and retention by providing

a rich flow of information through various

modalities. The evidence suggests that videos offer

learning benefits compared to more traditional

content formats, because they combine visual,

moving images, and sound in a cohesive way

(Burmark, 2004; Hibbing and Rakin-Erikson, 2003).

The results of interviews with children after a

digital storytelling session in the form of a video

about what made them love this learning method

showed what makes digital storytelling appealing to

children in terms of visual and audiovisual

characteristics; the characters and the atmosphere

featured in the storytelling video, character-filled

sounds, storylines and songs that accompany stories

that children can usually imitate are all important

factors. After the video storytelling is played, then a

quiz about the video reinforces elements, like

mentioning the characters in the digital story, the

traits that the characters have in the story, what good

things they get from the story, and the bad things

that are suffered. Then educators can close this

digital storytelling activity by providing good and

bad things that are necessary and unnecessary for

children to know following on from the story.

The last question is whether they prefer

storytelling in a traditional way or storytelling in

digital form. Basically they liked both traditionally

storytelling, that usually features characters like

hand puppets, or characters made from paper which

make them interested and happy to listen, but if it

will be done again the storytelling activities of

children more agree if done storytelling in digital

form. This is because storytelling in digital form is

not monotonous, the songs that accompany the story

make them happy, they are not just listening to

stories and they can sing and dance together.

Storytelling in digital form can be any story

deliberately created for a child's education, usually

stories that include moral values so that children can

learn lessons from watching the video of the story.

The use of digital storytelling by teachers in the

teaching process can increase children's enthusiasm.

Children in kindergarten tend to be more excited

when their teachers read stories. Learning by using

storytelling in a digital form makes them more

interested in making it easier to absorb information.

Digital storytelling has a lot of influence on the child

in the development of the child's behaviour. The

moral values contained in digital storytelling are

absorbed by the child very well.

Their parents also pointed out that children

follow what they see; thanks to watching the

storytelling videos they see their favorite characters

Digital Storytelling

193

doing good things. They also do good deeds, do

good things with parents, friends, and nature, such as

being honest, helping parents, making friends with

everyone, not bullying friends, being frugal, saving,

being independent, loving animals, throwing rubbish

in the correct place, etc. Stories that are commonly

used in kindergarten lessons are usually short stories

to keep in mind, and stories of everyday life that

children can equate to their lives.

5 CONCLUSION

The existence of a digital storytellling curriculum in

education in kindergarten is an appropriate step to

support children's education. Children in

kindergarten are in a period of growth and

development. They tend to imitate what they see.

Digital storytelling makes the child more

enthusiastic, happy, and excited so that the

information delivered by the story is easily absorbed

by the child. It is not simply fun; with a digital story,

the good behaviour in the traits that character

possess in the story can be imitated by the child. The

problem of digital storytelling is that children can be

addicted to watching videos they like, so it takes the

guidance of educators and parents to help children

both to control their intense wish to watch video

storytelling and to guide their perspective on the

entertainment to better things. However, storytelling

in a traditional way is not less interesting, but the

drawback is that the child usually loses focus if the

story is not interesting anymore. Storytelling in the

traditional way is considered monotonous because

there is only one voice from the storyteller; it is

necessary to have storytellers who are trained to

make traditional storytelling feel lively and fun.

Indirectly, the benefits gained from storytelling

lead to the formation of good habits amongst

children. Moral messages can be delivered by

educators after the storytelling activities which have

been both digitally and traditionally performed.

Little things like helping parents, singing, friends,

loving animals, saving, always being honest and

independent, and stick in the child’s memory and

cause them to carry out the messages they have

received.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Thank you for PERTIWI kindergarten along with

educators, accompanying parents and very funny

students who support this research. And this

researcher is supported by Faculty of Humanities,

University of Indonesia and the Directorate of

Research and Community Service, University of

Indonesia.

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